QES Consulting was engaged to develop and lead a Family Support Project at a school in London

Background
On September 21st 2007, the Department of Education (then the DCSF) called together 13 Local Authorities to form a national pilot programme around accelerating extended services to specifically address the guns, gangs and knives agenda. Ten London boroughs, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool have been invited to bid for £1.5m, identified to be spent between November and the end of March 2008, with an expectation to receive at least £150k for each LA project. Hackney was identified through the high level of crime in the Haggerston ward.

During the period November 07 –March 08, a DCSF-funded accelerated extended schools programme will be piloted in a high crime area of Hackney, Haggerston, as part of a national pilot involving 12 other Local Authorities.

The Haggerston ES pilot was intended to build the capacity of local schools and local partner organisations to respond / have impact on guns, gangs and knife culture, around accelerating the core offer of extended services to children, young people and their families: quality child care, a varied menu of activities including study support, parenting support and family learning, community access to school facilities and swift and easy access to Health and Social Care.

The intention is to build on current good practice in Haggerston schools or to build upon aspirations and identified gaps in provision from the current audit of services undertaken as Cluster E ES Action Plan. So the immediate emphasis will be on short term “quick wins” which can model practice leading to medium term capacity building and mainstreaming, in order to achieve long term exit/ sustainability outcomes.
Family Support and Learning
Intensive family support will be offered to targeted families with children at Randall Cremer Primary School, managed by Chris Kistan, Family Support Project Manager. Funding will be allocated to the school to use as a commissioning budget to buy services such as ranging from family group conferencing and victim support packages (domestic violence and relationship breakdown) access to iag through Job Centre Plus, mental health interventions (multi-systemic approaches including cognitive behaviour therapy), child care (places at local after school play centres), community mediation (resolve housing based problems) and alleviate poverty through household items grants

Long term sustainability was achieved by linking families to local parenting skills programmes, for example, Lifeline, a local voluntary organisation, already providing parent classes at Randal Cremer Primary School. The school bought into the model which is now in its 4th successful year.